Repositories provide a central place for recording metadata and enable one to store, manage, share and reuse information about data (i.e., metadata) that an enterprise uses. A repository can store definitional, management and operational information. Tools can be integrated with the repository to support information sharing and metadata reuse, and tool and technology models may be developed to manipulate the tool information in the repository. However, the transferring of data within models from tool to tool or from a tool to the repository has been a cumbersome and unyielding task for a long time.
Repository models typically contain classes, datatypes and messages. As more and more complex models are being built, the need arises for a method and system to transfer data in a model from place to place, e.g., to a tool that understands the UML ("Unified Modeling Language"). The present invention solves this problem by generating a data-transfer syntax in which a tool using a meta-model can transport data from place to place. It is pointed out that the present invention is not limited to UML, but is applicable to a wide variety of languages.
The prefix "meta" as used herein shall describe a relationship. For example, "meta-data" describes data. In a similar fashion, a meta-object is an object that represents "meta-data"; and, "meta-model" means a model that defines an abstract language for expressing other models. A "meta-metamodel" means a model that defines an abstract language for expressing meta-models. The relationship between a meta-metamodel and a meta-model is analogous to the relationship between a meta-model and a model.
It is a tedious and time consuming task to generate a format description for enabling the interchange of metadata among repositories and each different type of modeling tool available. Accordingly, there is a need for automatically generating format descriptions to expedite interchange of metadata among repositories and modeling tools. As will be described hereinbelow, this invention solves this problem by automating the production of an XML DTD for meta-models stored in a MOF-compliant repository by implementing instances of the meta-models expressible in a meta object framework.